aah, I see. Thanks for the response, Ilan.
But I don't build my things for the Market, just for myself and anyone who would like a copy. So I can't really build in Kitely at all if I want my builds to have export rights.

I guess this has nothing to do with my collada problems then either...

Hmm, it has been a good while since I tried this and I don't recall what viewer I used but it worked up to a point. I was able to export a linkset in dae format and import it into Sketchfab after some further processing. However, I had unresolved issues with textures. My impression at the time was that it was a rather "fragile" process but setting to full perms was helpful.

Thanks Selby and Ilan. I did read through the article. My permissions are always set with everything ticked, so it's not a problem of not being able to give people creations across the HG.
I'm actually trying to turn a few prim-heavy builds into mesh uploads via .dae. I have done this successfully a while back, but not in open sim. Thank you Graham for your insights. I have read on blogs that texture issues are rife, but I can't figure out why the collada only tries saving/converting 1 prim out of 30 (when all prims/textures are mine).

Anyway, I just tried this in latest Firestorm with a 7-prim linkset, a red chair with default texture. I set it to full perms and opened the export dialog. Default texture was (unsurprisingly?) rejected although the prims were shown as exportable and I saved in dae format. MeshLab crashed when I tried to import so I converted to fbx format using Autodesk's FBX Converter. This loaded OK into MS Paint3D from whence I exported it again in fbx format. Finally, I used the FBX Converter to convert back to dae. This imported satisfactorily back into Kitely, albeit with some LOD issues.

Clearly I need to play with this process a little more but my preliminary conclusion would be that it does work after a fashion.

Many thanks for going to all that trouble Graham, as it sounds terribly complicated that way. I used to simply save as a .dae and then upload using mesh model and it always worked. But as I mentioned, I haven't tried that in over a year and perhaps things are simply not the same in OS.

And I understand your issues with mesh. I have them too. I was just curious how the builds would work in mesh as I usually just build with prims and damn the prim-counting!

1. Yes, you can directly import an exported prim-derived mesh in Firestorm as per your normal practice (the other stuff was for general interest).
2. Firestorm does not seem to support export of textures with prim-derived mesh even if they are full perm. Whether that issue is Kitely-specific is untested.
3. Alchemy does not seem to have the export function (or I couldn't find it).
4. Singularity can export dae with textures and succesfully import them, albeit with LOD issues at default settings. It also supports obj and xml export but only imports xml (both untested).

Update: re 2 above, when I tried a more complex object with full perm textures, it appeared to depend on whether I was creator or not as to whether the texture was saved. Missing textures meant textures were incorrectly applied on importing. Basically this needs further investigation for Firestorm.